Leaver's broken
spirit I shall be as happy as you."
"It's going to make you a lot of trouble,--two guests in the house, for
an indefinite period. You see, I'm just waking up to what I'm asking of
you. It's precisely like my impetuosity to create a situation I can't
retreat from, and then wonder at my own nerve. Will it bother you very
much?"
"It's what we're here for, isn't it?" She smiled at him as he turned and
put both arms around her, kneeling beside her in the shadow of the vines.
"It's certainly what you are here for, and I am your partner, or I'm not
much of a wife."
"Bless you, you darling; you surely are. And such a partner! If Leaver
had one like you--he wouldn't be where he is. But he can't have you,"
he repeated, and held her closer. "I couldn't see you reading to him and
walking with him, and being a friend to him,--I couldn't see it, that's
all, no matter how much good you might do him. Queer--I didn't know that
was in me--that feeling. Macauley calls me a Turk. I guess that's what I
am. It's a primitive sort of instinct, scoffed at in these days when half
the married women are playing with fire in the shape of other women's
husbands. But I hate that sort of thing--have always hated it. I'm a
Turk, all right. Do you mind?"
"No, I don't think I mind," she answered softly.
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